To Fall for Winter

by Kelsey Kingsley

  ❧

  That night, after we had gotten back to the apartment, I helped Snow out of her dress and when she turned around, she caught my gaze and she smiled.

  “I really like your family,” she said lightly.

  “They like you too,” I said, watching the dress drop from her shoulders.

  The flowing black material seemed to slide in slow motion off of her frame, pooling at her feet as she stepped toward me. Her hands were ice against my chest, and my skin was fire, my heart thumping against my ribs.

  “I’ve, um … I’ve never done that before,” she said, barely making herself heard above the whistling wind outside. Her hands slid up my chest and onto my shoulders. She stood on her toes, tipping her head back to look into my eyes.

  “Done what?”

  “Met a guy’s family,” she said, her fingers lacing behind my neck.

  My brows knitted. “Never?”

  Looking into her eyes, I could sense it; there was a part of her, somewhere in there, that wanted to let me in. To wrap myself around her and bring a permanent element of heat into that wintry world inside her gaze. I could feel the door opening, feel her teetering on the precipice, and then …

  “I still haven’t given you your Christmas present,” she said, and before I had a chance to pull back and press further with my questions, she yanked me down. Took my mouth, snaked her pierced tongue along my lips before kissing me with an explosion of pent-up sexual frustration. “I’ve wanted you all fucking night,” she breathed against me.

  And any thought of prying further into her secrets floated out the open window as she broke the fevered kiss and lowered herself back to her heels, scratched her nails over my chest and stomach, and dropped to her knees. My hands were at the waistband of my jeans, but she pushed them away with a slow shake of her head.

  “This is my present, and I’m going to open it myself, thank you very much,” she teased, and her gaze never left mine as she pulled the zipper down with her teeth.

  My heart jolted, and my breath hissed through my parted lips. “If that’s your present, where’s mine?”

  “Patience, Ireland.”

  Her fingers wrapped themselves in the waistband of my jeans, of my briefs, and she pulled them to my ankles. And while I wanted to watch, wanted to keep my eyes on her and those feckin’ soft lips, I was washed away with the warmth of her mouth and my eyes rolled, fluttered shut, and my hands found themselves tangled in the black nest of her hair.

  She knew things. Knew when to use her lips, use her tongue, use her teeth. Knew just when to retreat, knew when to return. She knew when I was tipping over the edge, knew when to stop. Knew when to pull back, stand up, and shove me to the bed.

  Her strength didn’t allow her to knock me over; I fell willingly. Submitting.

  It’s what I had always wanted, always needed. It’s what I could never admit to myself with anybody else; what male wants to feel powerless and out of control? Stripped of his masculinity, the very essence of what makes him a man?

  But Snow wasn’t anybody else. She took the power, allowed my submission where I needed it, without ever allowing me to feel like a lesser man.

  Teamwork.

  “You want your present?” she asked, turning around, giving me an excellent view of the tendrilled tree encompassing the greater part of her smooth back.

  “Yes,” I growled, watching as she coiled the sides of her black thong around her hands. Watching as she slowly bent over, putting on a show, sliding them over her legs.

  Holding the scrap of fabric in her hands, Snow walked, naked and mouthwatering, to the head of the bed. She grabbed my hands from my pulsating groin, pulled them above my head, bound my wrists with her lacy underwear. She leaned over me, pressed her lips hard against mine, passing her tongue through my lips and teeth to lick my mouth just as another scrap of soft material was laid over my eyes.

  “Merry Christmas Ryan,” she whispered against my lips.

  And the next thing I felt was her body encasing mine, pulling me blindly to the edge of the world, and I knew without a single doubt that it would only be a matter of time before I fell over.

  I just hoped she’d be there to meet me at the bottom.

  CHAPTER SEVEN |

  RESOLUTIONS & BELONGING

  A week flew by, and I couldn’t remember the last time I could say that, with the monotony of my life over the last two years.

  Wake up. Go to work. Come home. Go to bed. Wake up and do it again.

  Round and round, we go.

  But that week, I had spent a portion of every day with Snow and I found that, as unconventional as it all was, I liked it. I liked sleeping with her, warming her forever frigid body with the fire of mine. I liked waking up to her, drinking coffee in the morning with her, showering with her, driving her to and from work on the back of my motorcycle, and seeing her on my lunchbreak.

  A week and a half of that, and we had settled into a routine many couples don’t find for months, or even years. But we weren’t a couple, I kept reminding myself. She didn’t want to be a cat. But there was honesty, and the freedom of simply being together. And I found that, at least for a while, that’s all I really wanted. Hell, maybe even needed.

  Teamwork.

  And then, there was New Years’ Eve.

  ❧

  We went to Patrick and Kinsey’s place to celebrate.

  They hadn’t given the invitation with Snow as some sort of afterthought. There was none of that, “Hey Ryan, you should come over, and oh, you can bring that girl with ya, if you’d like” bullshite. Nah, Patrick had stopped by the clinic and said, “Hey Ry, you and Snow should come over for New Year’s Eve. Tell her to bring that pie she made for Christmas. We haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.” I hadn’t been able to control my smile when I accepted, because y’know, I had been in relationships with four girls, and none of them had ever been treated like that. Like they were really a part of it all.

  And this was the shite I thought about while Snow sat on my lap on Patrick’s couch, her arms wrapped tightly around my neck. She smiled at Sean, politely declining a glass of champagne, and he joked about there being that much more for him.

  Kinsey laughed, pulling the bottle from his grasp, and said, “Oh no, pal. I don’t think so. I pumped enough milk to keep Erin fed for the next few days. I’m getting drunk tonight, and that means this whole bottle is mine.”

  Patrick wrapped his arms around her waist from behind, kissed her neck. “That means these arseholes are leavin’ early,” he growled against her skin, and she pushed him off.

  “I’m not letting you anywhere near me until Erin is at least four and the memory of childbirth is hopefully somewhere far, far, far away,” and she turned, laughing her way into the kitchen.

  Sean rolled his eyes, dropping down next to Snow and me, and inclined his head in our direction. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m leavin’ early, whether he kicks us out or not. I don’t wanna be around when those two start kissin' on the couch. Dealt with that enough when we were kids, but at least now I have my own place to run to.”

  Snow nudged him in the arm with an elbow. “Oh, come on. They’re kinda cute.”

  “You wouldn’t have thought so if you were the one gettin’ kicked out of your own living room so the two of them could ‘watch a movie,’” he grumbled, using air quotes.

  I tightened my arms around her, tipped my lips to her ear and said in a growl, “And by that, he means, dirty … hot ... sex.”

  Snow clapped a hand over her mouth, cheeks pinking as she laughed, and Patrick kicked his boot against mine. “Feck off, arsehole. Christ, are ya kiddin’ me? We never had sex in the—”

  “Patrick!” Kinsey hissed from behind him, and Snow bit her lip with a giggle, metal clicking against her teeth.

  “What?” he asked, turning with arms outstretched. “These idiots think we would actually fuck on the couch in Mam and Da’s house.”

  Kinsey looked ar
ound him, incredulous eyes staring at the three of us, and she shook her head. “Oh, hell no. Do you know what your parents would’ve done to me if they had found out?”

  “Or walked in,” Patrick said, crossing his arms and nodding. “Actually, nope. Wait,” he held up a finger, “there was that one time when you were givin’ me—”

  “Are you at all capable of shutting up?” Kinsey asked, stepping toward him and smacking his chest, in sync with the lifting of her heels. “Fucking Irish bastard,” she said, and he bent down to kiss her.

  “And you love me,” he said with a laugh, and I heard Snow swallow.

  “Uh-huh,” Kinsey groaned, as she smiled and clutched the bottle of champagne to her chest.

  At midnight, Snow pressed her hands to either side of my face and pulled me to her. Her lips were on mine for a glorious five seconds, and then she hugged me and whispered in my ear, “I’ve never gotten a New Year’s kiss before.” The words wound through my ear canal, pushed into my pulsing veins, and slithered their delicious way straight to my heart.

  “How is that possible?” I asked quietly, my voice graveled, my arms around her.

  “Just enjoy the moment with me, Ireland.” And I don’t think I had any choice in the matter.

  Kinsey and Patrick had occupied the recliner with a kiss that was heading straight toward that baby she swore she didn’t want just yet, and Sean sat alone at the other end of the couch, staring at his hands and puffing his cheeks around an awkward sigh.

  “Here we go,” he muttered under his breath before taking a sip of his champagne.

  Snow released me from her grasp, and she turned to him. “Hey, get over here,” she beckoned him, and with a sigh and a small smile, he scooted over. Snow grabbed him by the chin and kissed his cheek, and said, “If I can get a kiss at midnight, everybody should.”

  Sean blushed, and my heart … Goddamn, my heart pumped with enough life for three men, and not an ounce of disappointment.

  Shortly after, when Kinsey started getting handsy in the recliner, Patrick really did kick us out, and that was just fine. Because the woman on my lap was toying with the hair at the back of my neck, reminding me that it had been approximately six hours since I had last had her frigid body under mine and I needed to warm her up.

  And as we rode home, her arms wrapped around my waist, I couldn’t help but enjoy the simple satisfaction of having the cold wind in my hair and my heart insisting on so many things my brain wished to be true.

  ❧

  The thing was, Snow had blended into us all like she was always meant to be there, and more than once, it had felt as though she’d grown up with the group of us. What scared me, was that I found myself wishing that she had. I wished she had shared in our childhood. I wished that I had known her longer, wished that I had met her before meeting all of those other girls. Before all the bad decisions, before the disappointments.

  Before Cheryl.

  Cheryl hadn’t tried to get along with my brothers. Never tried to relax. Her presence with them was a stick up life’s arse, a hindering chink in the chain, and I wondered, what the hell had made me think that was a good thing to hold onto?

  And this was the shite I thought about as I buried my face into Snow’s ebony hair and inhaled the scent of her herbal shampoo. As I wrapped my arm around her waist, pulled her into my body, content and satisfied. As I felt her smile in the dark, and I listened to her sigh.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked her, my voice a whisper in the nighttime shroud that had fallen over my bedroom.

  “I’m thinking that we should get a crockpot, and then we can throw dinner together before work. That way, we won’t have to spend all that time cooking when we get home.”

  We.

  Home.

  Those little words that should have been by all accounts red flags, after only knowing her for a week, but … nah, my heart just pounded into her naked back, trying desperately to push itself beyond all of that skin and bone. To make itself at home in her chest, next to hers, where I suddenly felt was the only place I ever truly belonged.

  I was so screwed.

  Swallowing around the beating organ in my throat, I said, “We, huh?”

  Her fingers interlaced with mine, pulling my hand between her breasts. “Yeah, we. You and me, Ireland. We need a crockpot.”

  I nodded, breathing in the scent of patchouli and exhaling the disappointment that had weighed me down for too long. No more. “Yeah, sure. We can grab one after work tomorrow.”

  “We can see if Sean’s working and ask him to have dinner with us.”

  “Sure,” I replied, burying my smile deeper into her hair. “I bet he’d like that.”

  “And we need to go grocery shopping, too. We’re out of some stuff, and when we get a crockpot, I’ll need shit to throw dinners together.”

  “You got it.” My beard rasped against her skin as I kissed her shoulder.

  Her cool back pressed against my warm chest, her arse wiggling against my cock, and had my thoughts not been somewhere far away, I would’ve grabbed her and buried myself in her again. But I didn’t react to her obvious attempts at getting me hard, and she rolled over, putting us face to face.

  “What are you thinking about?” She tugged at my beard.

  “I think you should move in with me.” The words tumbled out quicker than I wanted them to, but it was the truth. That’s what I was thinking, that’s what I wanted. I wanted it more than sex. So much more, and in the dark I could make out her smile.

  “Now, what are you thinking?” I asked, pulling her into my chest.

  “I’m thinking that’s a relationship faux pas.”

  “We’re not in one, remember?” I teased, sliding my hand down her back, along her spine where I knew the trunk of that tree was emblazoned to her skin. My fingertips grazed the curve of her perfect arse, my tongue licked the metal piercing through her lip, and I pulled her tighter against me.

  “Why do you want me to move in?” Her fingers tangled into my hair. Her lips moved over mine.

  I didn’t hesitate. “Because I like having you around, and I feel like you belong here.”

  “Well, that’s a first,” she said, wrapping a leg around my hip. Pressing forward, taking me in. We sighed in unison, as though we hadn’t just done this. As though we couldn’t get enough. “I’ve never really belonged anywhere before.”

  I knew exactly what she meant, and I kissed her lower lip. “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT |

  EX-GIRLFRIENDS & SKETCHBOOKS

  And so, two weeks after Snow came to River Canyon, she moved out of her place over the Church Lady’s garage and into my apartment in Granny’s basement.

  She was always here, anyway.

  There were things she wanted, things she didn’t ask for.

  She wanted a TV, because she loved old movies. She wanted to use the other bedroom as an art studio. She wanted half of the bedroom closet, wanted a shelf in the bathroom medicine cabinet, wanted a different shower head.

  She didn’t ask for these things, but I gave them to her. Because I liked having her there, and I wanted her to be comfortable. I wanted her to feel at home with me, as much as I felt at home with her.

  There was only one thing she did insist on: that I tell her the stories behind the cats. She said that, as long as she was living there, as long as she was partly responsible for scooping out the cat shite, she should know where their names originated from. I agreed that was fair, and so, one by one, the night she officially moved in, we went over them.

  “This one?” She held up the Maine Coon.

  “That’s Jennifer—Jenny. She flirted like it was breathing, didn’t care when I saw her doin’ it either, and then I caught her fuckin’ some guy at a bar.”

  “Oh, that’s lovely,” she said dryly, letting the cat scamper away to one of the cat towers in the living room.

  “Yeah. I punched the arsehole in the face, sent him runnin’, and all she had
to say was, ‘Calm down, Ryan. You didn’t care when I slept with those other guys,’ as if I had known about it.” I told the abridged version of the story with my hands stuffed into the pockets of my jeans, walking around the apartment, unable to look at her.

  She picked up the orange-and-black tabby. “Okay. Her?”

  “Jessica, or, Jessie. While we were out somewhere, she had threatened to stab me when she caught me glance at another girl. I didn’t think anything of it, until she really did stab me, when she thought I had flirted with Patrick’s ex-wife.” I pointed at a tattoo on my arm, and the raised line beneath it.

  Snow looked startled at that. “Seriously?”

  I nodded, eyes on the tattoo. “Yep.”

  “Did you flirt with her?” The crystalline eyes speared with anxious questioning.

  “I would never,” I swore, my voice unwavering. “Not only was she my brother’s feckin’ wife, but that’s not what I do in general. But, still … Jessica saw what she wanted to see and attacked me.”

  The worry was gone, and she shook her head, disbelieving. “What the hell did she stab you with?”

  “A can opener.” I chuckled, running a hand over my hair. “Needed eight stitches.”

  “Jesus,” she laughed uneasily. “You’ll have to tell me the whole story someday.” And then, she pointed at the black-and-white cat. “That one?”

  Following her finger, I nodded slowly. “Tara. She was a more serious one. We actually lived together for a few months.”

  “So, you have lived with women before, aside from Granny and your mother,” she teased.

  “Yeah.” I nodded, and for some unexplained reason, I felt the need to add, “And I’m pretty sure I loved her.”

  She thought I didn’t notice that sharp intake of air, as she quirked a brow. “Only pretty sure?”